The infamous MAP test is set to be administered in my son’s school this week. The MAP is a computerized test meant to measure students in math and reading. Seattle Public Schools initially required MAP kindergarten through high school, with multiple testing periods per year. In 2013, Garfield High School launched a boycott of the …
2016 has begun with important news: We have endured the last days of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan roaming the halls of government, looking for teachers and students to intimidate. Arne, "the nation's bully," no longer runs the schoolyard. Educators and families around the country will remember him by many monikers, none of them sympathetic. …
Continue reading Arne Duncan: Testocracy Tsar. Educational Alchemist. Corporate lackey.
Never in U.S. history have more students, parents, and teachers engaged in acts of resistance to standardized tests. During the 2015 testing season, over 620,000 public school students around the U.S. refused to take standardized exams, according to a report by the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). I wrote this essay for …
Continue reading Five 2015 victories that put cracks in the ‘testocracy’
In 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union waged a successful strike that revived the lessons of social justice unionism and taught educators around the country that it was possible to beat back the corporate education reform agenda. This strike was the opening salvo for much of the recent uprising around the country against the privatization of …
Continue reading Why Chicago Teacher Sarah Chambers Is Voting To Strike
José Vilson teaches middle school math in the Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, NY. His book, This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education, stormed the heavily guarded gates of the education reform debate, battered them down, and made people sit up straight and listen to a social justice …
Continue reading This Is Not A Review: José Vilson’s reflections on “More Than a Score”
I AM AN EDUCATOR 
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